April Comments
2017

ANON
Apr 29th, 2017 @ 08:59 PM

People
responsible for Grace ‘must be named’, says TD…

A TD who played
a key role in uncovering the Grace foster home abuse scandal has
said the people responsible must be named because “the day you
blame a system and walk away from it is over in
Ireland”.

Fianna Fáil
public accounts committee chair John McGuinness made the comment
after the president of the High Court Peter Kelly agreed a €6.3m
settlement from the HSE to Grace over the case.

Speaking on RTÉ
Radio’s Morning Ireland, Mr McGuinness said the settlement is
welcome and a long overdue move to help Grace with the rest of her
life.

However, he
heavily criticised the failures in the HSE, saying money “does not
compensate in any way for the loss of a life that was destroyed at
the hands of the HSE” and that those responsible must still be
named.

“I hope this
inquiry [the separate State commission of investigation launched by
the Government earlier this year] gets to the very bottom of both
this foster home and who went through it.

We want to know
who those people were, the day you blame a system and walk away
from it is over in Ireland,” he said.

Mr McGuinness
echoed the views of Justice Kelly and the whistle blower who first
reported her case, saying while the €6.3m settlement is welcome and
“a considerable amount of money” it “does not compensate in any
way” for what happened.

He said HSE and
Tusla officials must “now ensure the type of abuse, physical and
sexual abuse, that Grace endured for all those years does not
happen again” and said the “cover-up” of the case can never be
repeated.

Meanwhile, it
has emerged the State commission of investigation into the Grace
case and the treatment of 46 other extremely vulnerable people at
the same Waterford foster home has only now begun its work despite
being launched in February.

ANON
Apr 29th, 2017 @ 08:56 PM

Senators are
seeking an end to children with mental health issues being treated
alongside adults in State institutions.

The senators
are giving two weeks for written submissions from interested groups
or individuals which will then be considered during their public
hearings in the Seanad chamber ahead of their final
report.

Founder of the
Pieta House suicide prevention charity and senator Joan Freeman has
been appointed rapporteur to lead in the compilation of the
report.

She said the
primary focus of the consultation is to provide a forum where child
and adolescent mental health service users, key civil society
activists, and service providers who have engaged, or are presently
engaging, with mental health services can bring their views to the
Oireachtas.

“We are seeking
their experience of current practice and views on how we can
modernise and improve children’s mental health services in
Ireland,” she said.

Ms Freeman
wants the Government to take the action to stop such children from
being admitted to adults-only institutions.

The charity is
pushing for the admission of children to adult-facilities to be
banned via legislation, although she says that “will take a
year”.

Ms Freeman said
Ireland is “in breach of all international regulations” by allowing
the “enormous problem” of children in adult psychiatric
units:

“The inspector
of mental health services has described this as inexcusable,
counter-therapeutic and almost custodial.”

ANON
Apr 28th, 2017 @ 12:24 PM

1/4...No one
cried stop to Ireland’s Catholic institutions…

Editor's note:
The text that follows appeared in the Irish Voice on March 29th
2017 as a letter to the Editor.

I recall
clearly a shocking conversation that I had about 20 years ago, with
a fine man from Tralee, Co. Kerry about the Christian Brothers
Industrial School in that town.

He recalled
that some of the boys confined in the industrial school attended
classes with him in The Green, the brothers' local high
school.

He remembered
that when the final bell rang to end the school day they would bolt
for their living quarters because if they tarried at all they
claimed they would be beaten.

My other memory
of that conversation is much more disturbing.

He told me that
local people would sometimes hear screams at night from the
school.

As a teenager,
he was surprised by this and asked his father, who worked as a
laborer in the town, what was going on to cause such nocturnal
cries.

His father
replied that such matters were beyond his ability to deal with and
that his son was better not talking about them a very
understandable response in those times.The scene of
boys crying out for help to a deaf and seemingly uncaring community
in my own county 50 or so years ago, is seared in my
memory.

The men in
clerical robes were paid by the state and honored for their work by
the local clergy and dignitaries.

Completely
disregarded was the clear admonition of the 1916 leaders that the
country they fought and died for must "treat all the children of
the nation equally.

" Poor,
marginalized kids who had nobody to speak for them cried out in
pain and nobody answered the stuff of nightmares.

ANON
Apr 28th, 2017 @ 12:20 PM

2/4...I was
reminded of these poor boys by three recent related reports, one
from the Vatican and one each from Australia and
Ireland.

Three years
ago, Pope Francis responded to the sordid stories from all over the
world of children being sexually abused by priests and brothers by
setting up a high-powered commission with a mandate to develop
policies and recommendations to protect children.

This
distinguished group, led by papal favorite Cardinal Sean O'Malley
from Boston, included two victims of clerical abuse, Peter
Saunders, a Briton, and Marie Collins from Dublin.

Saunders, who
was abused by two priests as a teenager, cast a cold eye on the
commission, describing it as mainly a public relations exercise by
church leaders, and he was outspoken in his criticism of senior
curia officials, including Australian Cardinal George
Pell.

He was removed
from the committee last year. He berated the whole Vatican
bureaucracy, including the Pope, for lack of urgency in dealing
with the clerical abuse crisis.

Recently
Collins, who was repeatedly sexually abused by a priest from age 13
in Dublin, resigned from the papal group for basically the same
reasons as Saunders.

She explained
that she was tired of "constant setbacks" from the various curias
who "thrive on silence and cover-up." She said that she doesn't
doubt Francis' sincerity and commitment but that it is unacceptable
that "men at this high level in the church do not see child
protection as a priority."

ANON
Apr 28th, 2017 @ 12:18 PM

3/4...It
certainly doesn't augur well for the effectiveness and credibility
of O’Malley’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors
that the two members who could testify from bitter experience about
the terrible effects of clerical child abuse have
resigned.

The Royal
Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse in
Australia reported a few weeks ago. The Catholic community there is
in shock because the results show that children assigned to
Catholic institutions fared very poorly in this area of child
protection.

The headline in
many newspapers highlighted the finding that an astonishing 40
percent of St. John of God Brothers abused their young vulnerable
clients.

The results for
the Irish Christian Brothers were better at 22 percent; Marists and
De La Salles came in at about half of that and "only" one in 14
priests disgraced themselves by becoming predators instead of
defenders of vulnerable children.

The third and
most recent account which relates to the Bon Secours Home in Tuam,
Co. Galway, was even more incredible and mind shattering than the
Australian report.

Details emerged
of about 796 bodies of dead children, buried in pits adjoining the
sewerage system in Tuam in one of the nine Catholic mother and baby
homes throughout Ireland.

This "home" was
under the care of the Bon Secours Sisters who are still active in
Ireland.

Taoiseach Enda
Kenny spoke passionately in the Dail about "the chamber of horrors"
in Tuam. He said, “We took their babies and gifted them, sold them,
trafficked them, starved them, neglected them or denied them to the
point of their disappearance from our hearts, our sight, our
country."

ANON
Apr 28th, 2017 @ 12:16 PM

4/4…Two big
questions must be asked about what went on in these "homes" and
"schools" in Ireland and Australia. How did priests and nuns and
brothers, supposedly committed to high-level Christian living,
trained in strict Catholic novitiates, perform such awful acts,
including in some cases starving and buggering the children in
their care?

Why did some of
them not cry stop? How do you explain the group depravity and
corruption pervading these awful Catholic
institutions?

The second
question relates to the public authorities because these religious
orders were paid for their services out of the public purse.
Inspectors visited the industrial schools but bought the lies of
the men responsible for running them.Ironically,
boys in these so-called reformatories in Northern Ireland had a
better chance of some level of humane treatment because the British
inspectors were less likely to accept the palaver of the people in
charge.

Famous Irish
priest Father Flanagan of Boys Town fame visited Ireland in the
forties and realized that there were major problems in the
industrial schools.

He addressed
the issues, stressing the positive policies he followed in his
program for similar troubled youth in Nebraska.

No bishop spoke
out in his favor, and he was rebuked publicly in the Dail as an
outside troublemaker by the then Minister for Justice Gerard
Boland.

Apart possibly
from the Irish Civil War, the complete abandonment of humane and
Christian principles in dealing with the most vulnerable young
people is by far the biggest stain in the Irish people's story
since the country achieved independence in 1922.

* Gerry O’Shea,
Yonkers, New York

ANON
Apr 19th, 2017 @ 04:27 PM

1/2...Developers of laundry
in Cork must check for graves…

Developers of
an apartment complex at a former Magdalene Laundry in Cork must
carry out an assessment of the “likely occurrence of undocumented
burials of children” on the site before planning permission can be
granted.

The details are
among the further information requested in relation to the recent
planning application for the Good Shepherd Convent at Sunday’s Well
on the northside of Cork city.

However, before
planning could be granted, Cork City Council said the possibility
that there are undocumented burials of children at the site needed
to be fully explored.he council
sought “research on records of residents of the Institution,
numbers of recorded deaths and recorded burials including an
assessment of the likely occurrence of undocumented burials of
children in the context of evidence from comparable institutions in
Ireland”.

It also
requested that a geophysical survey and test trenches “of all
anomalies” identified in the survey is required.

The council has
further required that the developers “develop and enhance” the
Magdalene graveyard at the site.

“The
significance of the Magdalene or ‘penitents’ graveyard, while not
within the boundary of the current proposal, cannot be
discounted.

ANON
Apr 19th, 2017 @ 04:25 PM

2/2...Please
submit revised proposals to develop and enhance the Magdalene
Burial Ground as part of the overall development of the subject
site.

This should
include a revision to the rear walkway giving access to the western
graveyard to include universal access from the vicinity of the
Bakehouse. Dedicated visitor car parking should be provided,”
states the council.

The headstone
contains the names of just 30 women who died between 1882 and
1973.

The grave was
unmarked until the late 1990s, when the order agreed to erect a
headstone following a campaign by a former resident of the
laundry.

However, in
2013, the Irish Examiner revealed that the grave had been badly
vandalised and is inaccessible behind an eight-feet-high wall and
gates which are welded shut.

It remains in
that condition today.

Some of the
women listed on the headstone are also listed as being buried at
another graveyard in Cork.

Mari Steed of
Justice For Magdalenes Research said any results from the
assessment to ascertain whether there are undocumented burials on
the site should be made public after the geophysical examination is
carried out.

“In light of
the Good Shepherds Sisters’ poor record-keeping and, given that
there are significant discrepancies and gaps in the existing
headstones marking Good Shepherd graves in Cork, every effort
should be made to identify all human remains that may be interred
at Sunday’s Well.

It is
absolutely imperative that the nature of the identification process
is determined and carried out by independent experts and the
results made publicly available,” said Ms Steed

ANON
Apr 17th, 2017 @ 07:50 PM

The group
streams the encounter on Facebook as a suspect is asked if he is
there "to meet a child for sex".

A brawl broke
out at a Kent shopping centre after a group of self-styled
"paedophile hunters" confronted a man suspected of grooming a
14-year-old girl.

In a video
streamed live on their Facebook page, the group is seen approaching
a 29-year-old man at the Bluewater Shopping Centre in
Greenhithe.

"You're here to
meet a child for sex, yeah?," one of the group is heard
saying.

The man denies
the accusations and says the girl in question had told him she was
"18 plus".

Members of the
group, dressed in black shirts, tell the man to stay still and wait
for the police to come and arrest him, while questioning him over
his nationality.

As the
confrontation continues, a younger man in a red shirt attack the
man accused of grooming the girl, kicking him in the head and
punching him while Bluewater security guards try to break up the
fight.

Detective Chief
Inspector Emma Banks, of Kent Police, said the man had been
arrested on suspicion of grooming and officers were investigating
the disturbance.

"Officers from
Kent Police arrested a 29-year-old man from East London at
Bluewater Shopping Centre on suspicion of grooming at 2.27pm on
Sunday 16 April 2017," she said.

"I strongly
discourage people taking the law into their own hands to avoid them
and others including individuals which may have been wrongfully
identified, being put in any danger," she added.

"Any acts of
violence reported will always be fully investigated and enquiries
into this incident are ongoing."

ANON
Apr 17th, 2017 @ 05:19 PM

1/2...Ireland tolerated
abuse of children, says legal expert…

By Noel Baker,
Senior Reporter, Saturday 15 April 2017

Some victims of
historic child sex abuse were “forgotten by the law”, according to
an analysis of more than 50 high court and supreme court decisions
relating to a range of cases.

The claims are
contained in new research conducted by Sinéad Ring of Kent Law
School, who investigated criminal cases In Ireland between 1999 and
2006.

Referring to
the “unprecedented numbers of adults” who from the early 1990s
onwards reported to the Gardaí they had been sexually abused as
children, Dr Ring said Irish society appeared to “tolerate” the
abuse of children.

She said
parents, teachers, Gardaí, and others were involved in creating and
sustaining a culture of silence around child sexual
abuse.

The research
focuses on the written decisions issued by the High Court and
Supreme Court from 1999 to 2006 in relation to applications by
defendants to have their trials prohibited.

Defendants
charged with historical abuse offences could seek to have their
trials prohibited on the grounds that a fair trial was impossible
due to the delayed reporting.he courts
employed a legal test to scrutinise the reasons for the delay,
including whether the victim was suffering under the ‘dominion’ of
the abuser and was unable to report sooner.

ANON
Apr 17th, 2017 @ 05:17 PM

2/2…Examing
54 such cases, Dr Ring said the law “produced a simple narrative of
the passive and traumatised victim paralysed by the domination of
the abuser”.

She said this
perpetuated “stereotypes about ‘real’ rape victims” and that
“victims who did not fit the dominion narrative such as those who
attempted to report at the time, or those who went on to lead happy
and healthy lives were forgotten by law”.

Dr Ring said
that, until it was replaced in 2006, dominion was the key issue for
courts hearing applications brought by defendants to halt their
trial on historical child sexual abuse offences, and while
initially a “progressive moment in Irish law’s treatment of victims
of historical child sexual abuse”,

it later became
problematic for a number of reasons, including that it “closed off
consideration of the broader societal factors why a child remained
silent for so many years”.

In one case
involving a Roman Catholic curate, the dominion narrative accepted
by the court “translated the failure of the Church authorities to
stop the abuse into a minor detail in the Court’s account of the
past”.

The Victim of
Historical Child Sexual Abuse in the Irish Courts 1999-2006 is
published in Social and Legal Studies

ANON
Apr 15th, 2017 @ 08:45 PM

1/2...Mother
and baby home survivors call for charges of genocide against Irish
state…A group of
mothers who were former residents in mother and baby homes in
Ireland wrote to the Irish Attorney General Máire Whelan calling
for formal charges of genocide to be brought against the Irish
state.

The charge is
made on the basis that the mothers did not give valid consent for
the children to be adopted.

Between the
late 1940s and early 1970s, 2,200 Irish infants were sent for
adoption to America.

There have been
claims that birth and death certificates of adopted children were
falsified in order for the adoption process to take place, claims
that are currently under investigation by the Mother and Baby Homes
Commission who are investigating the behavior of 18 of said homes
as part of an independent inquiry.

Irish First
Mothers, which is reported to represent 70 women, claims that the
manner in which the babies were presented for adoption falls within
the remit of genocide as the forcible transfer of children from
unmarried women.

The group has
also called on the International Criminal Court to informally
assist Whelan if the Attorney General was to proceed with such a
prosecution.

The founder of
Irish First Mothers Kathy McMahon wrote to Whelan on April 4, 2017,
citing the definition of genocide in the UN convention on the
prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide as the foothold
to the group’s claim.

Describing it
as the intentional destruction of “a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group”, Irish First Mothers claims the Irish State
allowed the Catholic Church to bracket unmarried mothers as such
and allowing for their attempted destruction.

“We assert that
the perpetrators were malignly motivated by their own Catholic
ideological characterization of us as a religiously defined group:
a caste of so called ‘fallen women’,” McMahon said.

“Irish society
has a historic, deep Catholic veneration of the ‘virgin mother’ as
a deity figure.

“We now charge
that a religiously founded and motivated, State-funded, a mass
system of de facto incarceration caused us grievous life-long
injury; then forcibly removed our children by means of systemically
uninformed, impaired consents to the adoption.

ANON
Apr 15th, 2017 @ 08:41 PM

2/2...Our
children were with intent transferred from us as unmarried mothers
to couples married in civil law under religious ceremonies,” the
letter read.

The letter
references two incidents, in particular, they believe prove this to
be the case.

The first is a
2015 radio interview with former Supreme Court judge Catherine
McGuinness who stated: “I must say that, at the time, you wouldn't
have thought that the mothers who were consenting to have their
children placed for adoption, that they that they really hadn't a
great deal of choice they were, shall we say 'encouraged' to place
their children for adoption.”

The other was
the words of the then Irish Minister for Justice Paddy Cooney at
first Irish Adoption Workers Conference in 1974, who said: “I think
that we are all agreed that the consensus opinion in our society is
to the effect that adoption is better for the illegitimate baby
than to be cared for by its mother.”

The
Attorney-General has since responded to the group, according to The
Times, to say that she does not have any prosecution function to
bring such charges against the Irish government as their legal
advisor.

The calls of
Irish First Mothers for a widening of the scope of the Mother and
Baby Homes investigation was somewhat strengthened last month by
the criticism of the Irish government by European Human Rights
Commissioner Nils Muznieks, who called on the state to widen the
terms of reference of the inquiry.

In a report
issued on March 29, the Commissioner "stresses the need to ensure
that all international human rights standards in this field are
fully respected at all stages of the restorative
processes.

"The
Commissioner recalls that all victims have a right to be treated
with dignity, to truth, full support and effective remedies
ensuring reparation, including apologies, compensation, and
rehabilitation, as well as to investigations into allegations of
abuses that are prompt, independent, thorough and capable of
ensuring the accountability of the perpetrators," said the
report.

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:27 PM

Tuam
mother-and-baby home survivors air concerns about burial
siteat meeting with
Ministers, concerns were also raised about access to personal
records…

Survivors of
the mother-and-baby home in Tuam raised various concerns, including
about the future of the burial site, at a meeting with Minister for
Children Katherine Zappone and Minister for Housing Simon Coveney
on Friday.

About 30
survivors are understood to have attended the private meeting,
which was arranged by the historian Catherine Corless, whose
research uncovered the mass grave.

During the
two-hour meeting, the women raised various issues, particularly
relating to access to their personal files and what would be done
with the site in the future.

The meeting was
also attended by Galway County Council chief executive Kevin Kelly,
as the local authority owns the land.

“It was a very
open and frank meeting, and the Minister came to listen; that was
the role of the meeting,” a spokesman for Ms Zappone said
afterwards.

“Clearly they
have identified a number of actions they want taken, and the
Minister will examine what can be done to address their
concerns.”

Issues were
raised by three or four women at a time and responded to by both
Ministers, although it is understood no indication was given about
what would be done with the site at this stage.

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:24 PM

1/2...State
accused of misleading United Nations on Magdalene
liability…

Justice
Minister Frances Fitzgerald and her department have been accused of
misleading the UN by claiming the McAleese report made “no finding”
in relation to State liability with regard to Magdalene
Laundries.

Ms Fitzgerald
told the Dáil in February that a State apology was issued to the
women who worked in Magdalene Laundries despite the fact that there
was “no finding in the McAleese Report which indicated that the
State had any liability in the matter”.

This was also
stated in Geneva at a hearing of the UN Convention of Equality
Against Women by a Department of Justice
representative.

However, the
McAleese report states categorically that over one-quarter of all
referrals to Magdalene Laundries were facilitated by the
State.

In the State
apology offered by Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the women in 2013, he
also explicitly acknowledged the State’s “direct involvement” in
the Magdalene Laundry system.

“But from this
moment on you need carry it no more. Because today we take it back.
Today we acknowledge the role of the State in your
ordeal.”

“We now know
that the State itself was directly involved in over a quarter of
all admissions to the Magdalene Laundries,” he said.

Mr Kenny cited
the five areas specifically examined by McAleese namely routes of
entry/exit, regulation and State inspection, State funding and
financial assistance and death registrations, burials and
exhumations and said that in all of the above areas, there was
found to be “direct State involvement.”

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:22 PM

2/2...Claire
McGettrick of Justice For Magdalenes Research said Ms Fitzgerald’s
view was “indefensible” given the clear evidence of State liability
in the matter.

“Regarding
forced labour, it is indefensible for the Minister for Justice, her
Department or the Government as a whole to claim that they know of
no factual evidence that would give rise to the belief that the
State has any legal liability for forced labour in Magdalene
Laundries,” she said.

Ms McGettrick
pointed to multiple examples in the McAleese report where State
involvement in the laundries was clearly set out.

Sinn Féin’s
children’s spokesperson Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said Ms Fitzgerald,
and her officials have been misleading both the UN and the Dáil in
their comments on State liability.

“Not only is
both the Minister and her representative to the UN guilty of
peddling untruths, they are being quite insulting to those whom the
Taoiseach issued his apology in 2012,” he said.

Mr Ó Laoghaire
also said the full recommendations of the Quirke Report had yet to
implemented over four years on from the State apology.

“The Quirke
Report recommended establishing a “dedicated unit” with Magdalene
Survivors under the auspices of the Department of Justice to
discuss a permanent memorial dedicated to the Women and Children of
the Magdalene Laundries.“

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:20 PM

1/2..Oblates
say statement not meant to be insensitive to abuse
victims…

Intention was
to correct misinformation coming from politicians and reported by
media

A religious
congregation has said it was not being insensitive to victims when
it published a recent statement on “the moral challenge posed to
religious about the costs” of compensation.

The purpose of
the statement by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate was to
“correct a relentless stream of misinformation coming from some
politicians and reported in the media” about the redress scheme,
its provincial Fr Ray Warren said.

The statement
came after widespread criticism of religious orders recently after
a Comptroller and Auditor General report found that the redress
scheme and related matters had cost some €1.5 billion and that the
orders had fallen short of paying their share.

“Some welcomed
this as a statement of the factual background to the commission,
the redress board and role of the government and the detailed
chronology of how the religious became involved with the government
in the process,” Fr Warren said.

However, he
said “others were angry at what they perceived as our insensitivity
to the harm done to those who experienced as children the
reformatory and industrial schools system and at our apparent lack
of remorse”.

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:18 PM

2/2...Residential
institutions…

The Oblates
managed St Conleth’s reformatory at Daingean, Co Offaly which
closed in 1973. They were one of the 18 religious congregations
whose management of residential institutions for children was
investigated by the Laffoy/Ryan commission.

They were also
party to the €128 million indemnity deal in 2002 between the 18
congregations and the State.

Their recent
statement asserted that the redress scheme “was the Government’s
very own initiative, to meet the Government’s own moral
obligations, and the Government would lay down all the provisions
that governed it”.

The
congregations “were adjuncts to the scheme, and certainly not
partners”, while “the Government was certainly not initially
looking for the religious to pay a 50-50 share”, it
said.

Fr Warren said:
“The statement does acknowledge the moral claims of the victims of
the system and our moral duty in the light of the Ryan report
findings.

I am aware how
inadequate financial contributions are to make up for the harm
suffered by the victims but at the same time they are
important.

“In the light
of the Ryan report findings, the Oblates as many of you will know
apologised at that time and subsequently for our shortcomings. Many
are asking how the Oblates responded at the time to Ryan and to
redress. Details can be found on our archives link.”

On publication
of the Ryan report in May 2009, the Oblates said: “We wish to
reiterate the shortcomings on our part acknowledged to the
commission and the serious consequences for some of the boys in our
care.

ANON
Apr 11th, 2017 @ 12:15 PM

Labour wants
the Oireachtas Education Committee to hold hearings into the 2002
indemnity deal between religious congregations and the State in
relation to compensating victims of child sex abuse.

The deal saw
religious orders and the State agree to split the cost on a 50-50
basis - but the actual redress bill has seen the congregations'
share fall to as little as 13%.Education
spokesperson Joan Burton believes a committee of investigation into
the deal would be worthwhile.

“We had for
instance a couple of years ago, a relatively successful Dáil
inquiry into what happened in terms of the banks," she
said.

"This again is
a very large significant amount of money and I think as a society
and as a parliament we are entitled to know, how was this endemnity
created, who signed off on it, we know there are conflicting
versions of responsibilities."

ANON
Apr 7th, 2017 @ 11:35 AM

A Roman
Catholic priest will be sentenced for fraudulently diverting more
than £50,000 donated to his church by parishioners.

Father John
Reid, 69, admitted abusing his position after he took the money
meant for charitable purposes and the upkeep of St Cuthbert's
Church, Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

During the
four-year period, from June 2009 to October 2013, he instead spent
some of the money on foreign travel and restaurants.

He was also
accused of failing to keep proper receipts and
accounts.

At a previous
hearing Reid, who now lives in Stockton, Teesside, pleaded not
guilty to two charges of fraud by abuse of position, but last month
at Durham Crown Court he changed his plea and admitted one of the
charges.

After the
investigation was launched by Durham Police in 2014, Reid withdrew
from public ministry, which also included leading St Bede's Church
in Sacriston.

ANON
Apr 7th, 2017 @ 11:34 AM

When you can’t
win an argument you attack the person making it. It’s a bait and
switch ploy as old as politics. It’s what you’re reduced to when
the jig is really up.

Bill Donohue,
president of the Catholic League, has finally made that calculation
about Catherine Corless, the woman whose painstaking research
uncovered the truth about the 796 babies buried without a marker in
the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in County Galway.

The Tuam mother
and baby home was described as “a chamber of horrors” by the
Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny.

Last month a
state-appointed inquiry found “significant human remains” in
several underground chambers at the Tuam site and tests confirmed
the bodies ranged from premature babies to
three-year-olds.

But instead of
thanking Corless for her persistence in bringing the horrifying
tale to light, Donohue this week blasted her as a
credential-lacking charlatan who isn’t qualified to conduct the
meticulous research that led to the discoveries.

“Contrary to
what virtually all news reports have said, Corless is not a
historian,” Donohue sniffs in his latest media blast, “She not only
does not have a Ph.D. in history, she doesn't have an undergraduate
degree. She is a typist…”

A typist! How
could someone so academically inconsequential tilt at the Catholic
Church and hope to prevail? The idea is an absurdity.

“This does not
mean she is dumb many secretaries are brighter than the professors
they serve,”

Donohue
continues, again looking down his nose at her perceived social
insignificance. “Nor does this disqualify her from making a
contribution to historical events.

But she is no
historian.”

Perhaps she
would have been more accepted if she had one of the many degrees,
doctoral and such, that so any of the pedophile priests and those
who covered up for them had. Donohue’s exaggerated respect for
anyone with a collar shows the deep insecurity and craving for
respect the poor man has.

ANON
Apr 7th, 2017 @ 11:31 AM

2/2...There’s no question
Donohue occupies a more elevated social strata than the Irish women
he relentlessly attacks. Tax records for 2013 show he was paid a
salary of $474,876.

That’s a hell
of a lot of money to write poison pen letters and accuse
grandmothers of exposing the church.

If typists
can’t write can divorced men like Donohue lead right-wing Catholic
organizations and tell us all what to think?

There is no end
to Donohue’s pomposity. Donohue continues: “Those who think I am
being too harsh should consider what happened when Corless tried to
obtain information from the Galway County Council to facilitate her
research. She was told to take a hike she was denied access because
she lacked a university degre”

Doubtless, they
would have refused information, too, to college dropouts like Bill
Gates and Michael Dell and Evan Williams, co-founder of
Twitter.

His
condescension is unmistakable, but this is
Monday-morning-quarterbacking of the most pathetic sort.
Nevertheless, Corless persisted until she obtained the death
records, made the discoveries, alerted the world, and the Irish
state investigations confirmed her findings.

From an early
age, when she shared classrooms with the "home babies" as the
children of unmarried mothers were known, Catherine Corless sensed
something was very wrong about how the children from the Tuam home
were treated

Later, as an
adult, she undertook the research from a purely humanitarian point
of view believing those lost souls deserved that their stories be
told and an accounting made for how horrifically they were
treated.

She dug out the
truth and it was not pretty

Donohue can’t
deny any of this, so he’s mounted a pathetic rearguard attempt to
attack her standing. In Ireland, she is considered a national hero,
but Donohue’s mocking tone makes it clear that in his eyes she is
nothing more than a bumptious peasant who somehow got above her
station to discredit the Church and tell lies about its
operations.

Perhaps she
lacks his increasingly gilded paychecks, but she has already done
more for the truth by displaying Christian virtues such as charity
and compassion than the sclerotic Donohue ever has.

ANON
Apr 6th, 2017 @ 12:29 PM

“The window
dressing...

A woman who was
sexually abused by serial paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth has
criticised the Catholic Church for its “disturbing” failure to
change its ways.

“It’s all
nothing more than window-dressing to me. They haven’t taken real
action.

Release the
files, prosecute the predators and compensate the
victims.”

Helen McGonigle
was raped and sexually assaulted by Smyth in Rhode Island in the US
in the 1960s, when she was aged between six and nine years
old.

The attacks
took place in locations including a school, the church basement and
his car. He also assaulted her mother after he was sent back to the
parish following treatment in hospital in Ireland.

She was
commenting after a review of four congregations by the Catholic
Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children, carried out in
2015-2016, was published on Wednesday.

It found that
in regard to the De La Salle Brothers, the Norbertines and the
Nazareth Sisters, “their performance in the recent past does not
demonstrate any real change from their historical behaviour in
terms of ensuring good safeguarding practice or putting in place
effective pastoral responses to complainants who have made
allegations of abuse”.

Smyth, a member
of the Norbertine Order, was jailed in 1994 for sexually abusing
children.

“It’s
disturbing,” said Ms McGonigle, “because you would think with all
the attention that has been brought upon clerical abuse and on the
case of Fr Brendan Smyth specifically, and also the Norbertine
Order, that they would have taken steps to change their ways over
time.

“If the
Vatican, or the Norbertines, or the Catholic Church as a whole is
not forced to change its ways then the practices and the patterns
will continue.

“The Catholic
Church has not even changed its canon law that provides for secrecy
– that’s still in place, and that places victims under pontifical
secrecy,” she said.

“They can do
all the window-dressing they want and have all these reports come
out, which are just horrific and which state the truth for the
historical record, but we have to put the Vatican on notice that
they’ve got to change, and it has to come right from the
top.

“The window
dressing of Pope Benedict and Pope Francis apologising to victims
isn’t enough. There has to be action.”

ANON
Apr 5th, 2017 @ 05:18 PM

Limerick man
jailed for defilement of child…

A 72-year-old
man, who emphatically denied he had sexually abused a teenage girl
over a three-year period, has been jailed for six
years.

Michael Casey
of Cois Rioga, Caherconlish, Co Limerick was given concurrent jail
terms of six years and four years on a total of 16 charges of the
defilement of a child.

The sexual
abuse began in 2009 when the now 20-year-old woman was
13.Casey, who was
63 at the time, was good friends with her father as they both
worked in the retail shop trade.

The abuse
occurred at a number of locations including the victim's home and
at a disused factory in counties Clare and Limerick from June 2009
to December 2011.

The woman said
that the sexual incidents became almost routine and would happen
regularly, including on the morning of a Junior Cert
exam.

The abuse came
to light when she confided in a friend in 2012, who told a guidance
councillor at her school.

A complaint was
later made to Gardaí.

The woman said
the abuse had left her deeply traumatised and had led to
difficulties in her relationships, and she has needed
counselling.

Casey denied
the allegations, describing them as lies, fantasy and
rubbish.

He returned
from Africa, where he was doing charity work, to be interviewed by
Gardaí when confronted with the allegations.

Sentencing him
today at Limerick Circuit Court, Judge Tom O'Donnell said he took
into account the age of the victim, the grooming nature of the
offences, and that Casey was trusted by the victim's
parents.

He said the
offences were predatory in nature and the accused took advantage at
every opportunity to abuse his victim.

Legal aid was
granted in the event of an appeal.

ANON
Apr 4th, 2017 @ 11:18 AM

1/3...Congregations proven
right about cost dangers of redress scheme…

State ignored
warnings from religious groups about loose structures

The Oblates,
and others of the 18 religious congregations concerned, may feel
like King Canute on the shore fighting off a particularly filthy
modern tide in contesting claims they should pay half the €1.5
billion redress costs paid by the State as a result of abuse in
institutions run by them.

Who,
post-publication of the Ryan report in 2009, with all its scabrous
revelations about those abuses of children in such institutions,
would not accept that the congregations should in conscience pay at
least half those costs?

But it is to
put the cart before the horse. It was the State which framed the
redress scheme, not the congregations. And it did so in the teeth
of anxious warnings by the congregations as to where the scheme’s
loose structures would lead.

The
congregations were proven correct.

Now, a
seemingly profligate State demands the congregations pay half the
costs it has incurred despite their insistent warnings. The
congregations are correct. It is wrong, possibly even
“immoral”.

On October 4th,
2000, the Conference of Religious of Ireland indicated the 18
relevant congregations’ willingness to be involved with a State
compensation scheme for victims of abuse in residential
institutions run by them.

ANON
Apr 4th, 2017 @ 11:16 AM

2/3...Bottomless
purse...

It was in
response to an announcement on October 3rd by then minister for
education Michael Woods that the government was setting up such a
scheme.

Talks began on
November 10th, 2000, when it was agreed in principle the
congregations would be part of such a scheme. Soon, however, it was
clear they were troubled by what the State had in
mind.

At a meeting on
February 7th, 2001, they expressed concern at the level of
contributions sought from them but in particular at “the process
for validating claims of abuse which will require a low burden of
proof”.

As the recent
Oblate statement put it about these talks, “no religious order had
a bottomless purse. At that time, the government did seem to think
it had a bottomless purse”.

Seeing the
direction in which the state was headed, the congregations sought
an indemnity “against all further liability” as anything else
“would leave them facing financial uncertainty for years to
come”.

By a meeting on
April 4th, 2001, the indemnity had become “critical”.On April 30th,
2001, they told officials suggestions of a “50:50 ratio of
contribution” from them was “far beyond what they envisaged
happening”.

It is the first
time this “50:50 ratio” emerges.

Rather, they
felt their contribution should reflect “the fact that it was the
State that had decided to proceed with this form of redress; that
the State had decided to set the level of validation lower than
that of the courts; [and] their own [congregations’] assessment of
their own liability in a court situation”.

Negotiations
became tense. On June 26th, 2001, the congregations made their
“final offer” of IR£45 million – IR£20 million of which would be
cash – payable over five years. They argued it exceeded “by a
considerable margin what they reckon their exposure in litigation
to be.

ANON
Apr 4th, 2017 @ 11:13 AM

3/3...Disappointing...

They further
claimed the scheme devised by Government would “in itself increase
the number of claims, claims that they would otherwise never have
had to meet”.

In a letter to
Mr Woods on June 29th, 2001, then minister for finance Charlie
McCreevy described the congregations’ offer as “quite
disappointing” in the context “when contrasted with a possible cost
to the State of the order of £200-£400 million” in redress
payments.

Further
correspondence between the congregations and government took place
before an announcement on January 30th, 2002, that a deal was
agreed.

The
congregations would contribute a €128 million (IR£100 million) to
the redress scheme and would be indemnified by the State against
further claims.

The deal was
signed on June 5th, 2002. The Residential Institutions Redress
Board was set up seven months later in December 2002.

Such were
government estimates at the time that, according to a report by the
comptroller and auditor general of October 2003: “By November 2001,
the Department of Education and Science was estimating that the
potential number of claimants was likely to exceed 3,000 and might
rise to 4,000.

By June 2002,
[when the indemnity deal was signed] it was being estimated that
the number of claimants could be 5,200 or more.”

In the event,
15,579 people received awards, which averaged €62,250.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 04:32 PM

1/2...Catholic Church must
reform confession, abuse survivor says

An Australian
child abuse survivor has called on the Catholic Church to reform
its laws on confession to ensure crimes are reported to
police.

Peter Gogarty
said perpetrators knew anything disclosed in confession would not
be revealed to authorities.

He told the BBC
it was effectively a "get-out-of-jail-free card".

It follows the
final public hearings in an Australian inquiry, which has heard
evidence of abusers co

confessing
knowing their actions would not be divulged.

The issue of
mandatory reporting has split Australia's Catholic Church, with
archbishops differing on whether information given by a child
victim during confession should be relayed to police.

"What they are
doing is saying we are more prepared to protect an offender than we
are to take care of this child," said Mr Gogarty, who was 12 when
he was abused by a priest in New South Wales.

"If the royal
commission [inquiry] has shown us one thing, it is that a
paedophile does not stop until they die or are physically incapable
of molesting anymore."

The inquiry,
established in 2013, gathered evidence from 4,440 people who said
they were victims of abuse at Catholic institutions in
Australia.

Mr Gogarty
said the church had been slow to respond to the
claims.

"The church in
Australia has treated this like a nasty public relations disaster,"
he told the BBC.

"I don't think
they understand the depth of the disaster they have created and the
work they need to do to fix it."

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 04:30 PM

2/2,,,Francis Sullivan,
head of the church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, said the
institution had recognised its "shameful" role in enabling and
covering up abuse in the past.

He admitted
that evidence at the inquiry had "corroded the credibility of the
church", and said it had already paid hundreds of millions of
dollars in compensation to victims.

However, Mr
Sullivan said confession should not be altered to make priests
report abuse to the police.

"I think it
would be a tragedy if the privileged communication in the
confessional is abolished," he said.

"The Catholic
Church says that when it involves the seal of confession then that
information is sacrosanct - that the priest is bound by
that."

Mr Sullivan
said he favoured a system where a perpetrator confessing abuse was
advised to report the crime themselves.

"I think its
incumbent on the priest to say to the person if you are sincere
about this, if you want to absolved - then going to the authorities
is part of the exercise," he said.

Mandatory
reporting of abuse has been one of the key issues under
consideration by the royal commission, which has heard allegations
of abuse at more than 4,000 public organisations in
Australia.

The
commissioners are due to submit their final report and
recommendations in December

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 04:27 PM

The religious
congregations that managed residential institutions for children
have clearly been stung by the assertions of Taoiseach Enda Kenny
and others that they are morally obliged to pay half the costs
incurred by the scheme set up to compensate survivors.

A statement by
the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which The Irish Times
has established reflects the views of all 18 congregations
involved, makes it clear that the State put together the redress
scheme without their input.

The Oblates
note that the government at the time made this explicit in a
written reply to Róisín Shortall TD in June 2002, when it said that
the fund was established “without regard to whether the religious
would be involved”.

This was
against a background of more than 1,000 cases pending in the High
Court against the State and various congregations.

The reply
continued “that ‘the religious’ then ‘came on board’ saying they
wished to make a meaningful contribution to the scheme, and that
after long negotiations they agreed to pay €128 million in ‘cash,
counselling costs and real property’.”

The Oblates
observe: “In other words, it was the Government’s very own
initiative, to meet the Government’s own moral obligations, and the
Government would lay down all the provisions that governed
it.

” The
congregations “were adjuncts to the scheme, and certainly not
partners”, while “the Government was certainly not initially
looking for the religious to pay a fifty-fifty share”.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 04:24 PM

2/3...The
most generous feature of the scheme was that it would be made easy
to get an award

The
congregation also regards the redress scheme as generous. Average
awards of €62,250 were paid to 15,579 former residents, bringing
the cost to €1.5 billion by the end of 2015.

“The most
generous feature of the scheme was that it would be made easy to
get an award. Applicants had to prove they had been residents in a
Government-sponsored institution.

They had to
show they were injured while so resident and that the injury came
within the wide definition of abuse given in the Residential
Institutions Redress Act, 2002.

“They did not
have to prove or give any evidence at all that this was because of
any fault or negligence on the institution’s part,” the statement
says.

It
acknowledges that this was “also intended to spare the applicants
as much as possible from confrontational distress”.

Another aim
was to avoid the awards’ being used “as a ground for imputing
responsibility for abusive acts to any person or
institution”.

The Oblates
add that the deal was necessary from the congregations’ point of
view, as “without it the religious would still be open to being
sued by any past residents who chose not to accept an
award”

The Oblates
say that, at the time, and “unlike the Government, the religious
were concerned about the number of applicants.

Whether it
realised it or not, the Government was opening the door to
practically any past resident of an institution to make an
application and obtain an award: so wide was the definition of
abuse, so easy was it to apply.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 04:23 PM

3/3...Surely no religious
order could be an equal partner with the Government in such a fund!
No religious order had a bottomless purse.

At that time,
the Government did seem to think it had a bottomless
purse.”

The Oblates
quote from the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child
Abuse, under Mr Justice Seán Ryan, which says that the €128 million
“indemnity agreement of 5th June 2002 was not based on any
apportionment of responsibility for abuse”.

The Oblates
add that the deal was necessary from the congregations’ point of
view, as “without it the religious would still be open to being
sued by any past residents who chose not to accept an award” and,
therefore, “the religious would have had to keep all their
financial reserves intact”.

The indemnity
has been invoked 33 time so far, costing the State €4.4million plus
legal costs of € 5.7million.

The Oblates
managed St Conleth’s Reformatory School for Boys, in Daingean, Co
Offaly, which the commission severely criticised.

After it
published its report, in 2009, congregations offered additional
cash and property of €353 million. In September 2015 this figure
was revised downwards, to €226 million, when, according to the
Department of Education, the Christian Brothers withdrew an offer
of school playing fields and associated lands valued at €127
million.In the six
years to December 2015, according to the Comptroller and Auditor
General, the State had received €85 million, or 38 per cent of the
additional €226 million.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 11:27 AM

Foster
abuse victim’s family denied records by HSE…

The family of
the young girl known as ‘Sarah’ who was savagely abused in the
Grace foster home have been denied access to her medical records
for more than two years, despite apologies from the HSE for failing
her.

In an
exclusive interview with the Irish Examiner today, Sarah’s mother
and sister reveal the family’s torment in their battle to get
justice for her and how even now the system is denying them what
they are legally entitled to.

Despite
requesting the records back in 2015 through their solicitor, the
HSE claims the matter is still under review and to date has not
released the records.

This is
despite Sarah, who is non-verbal, being subjected to the most
savage abuse in the foster home, which she was removed from at the
age of 12.

In the
interview, Sarah’s mother recounts how she made the dreadful
discovery her daughter, who was residing part time in the foster
home, was being “schooled” by her abusers to drop her pants and
adopt a sexual pose on the utterance of a particular
phrase.

“One Sunday,
the kids were gone with Daddy to the water. I was here and we were
playing hide and seek and she was laughing and happy.

Then, I just
said certain words.and Sarah had been schooled and here in front of
the fireplace. It was my worst nightmare,” Sarah’s mother
says.

“A friend of
mine came in to see me.She looked at me and said ‘you are very
upset’ and I said ‘I am’.

“I asked her
would she go into Sarah in the next room and asked her would she
mind saying these words. She went in and said those same words and
Sarah did the same thing.

That was the
day. She was a qualified nurse. It was an awful, awful day to be
honest.”

But in
relation to the records, which the family has sought since 2015,
they have so far not been made available.

The family is
seeking not just the records but also who had access to them as
they believe there was a systematic attempt to suppress information
in relation to how Sarah’s case was handled.

The family
also discloses how when they began to raise concerns as to her
care, they found themselves under suspicion from authorities that
the sexual abuse could have been happening in their home and not
the foster home.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 11:24 AM

1/2...Consultants wanted
€2,200 a day to compile ‘Grace’ report…

Consultants
working on one of the two Grace foster abuse scandal reports wanted
€2,200 a day to do their work, the Irish Examiner can
reveal.Documents supplied by the HSE to the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) show the controversial 2015 Resilience Ireland
report ultimately cost €1,550 a day, following
negotiations.

According to
the documents, seen by the Irish Examiner, the details of the fee
arrangement for a report into the scandal at the foster home are
set out.

“At the
outset, Resilience Ireland indicated a daily rate of €1,100 in
respect of the two consultants engaged,” the documents
state.

“Following
negotiation, the position settled upon was a daily rate of €900 for
lead consultant and €850 for senior consultant which applied for
the period Resilience Ireland was engaged during 2014.

Thereafter,
following negotiation in January 2015, a further reduction was
settled upon giving daily rates reduced to €800 for lead consultant
and €750 for senior consultant.”

A
Government-sponsored report by Conor Dignam SC into the procurement
of the report could not conclude whether the procurement process
and procedure used by the HSE was adequate to ensure
independence.

Meanwhile, the
HSE delayed handing an internal report into the Grace foster abuse
scandal to Gardaí because of a legal complaint, new documents have
revealed.

The HSE has
been subjected to severe criticism from the Dáil’s Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) over the Grace scandal, and one of the issues it
had sought answers on was the delay in handing one of two reports
to Gardaí in 2012.

ANON
Apr 3rd, 2017 @ 11:21 AM

2/2...In
fresh correspondence to the PAC, the HSE has claimed the delay was
because of a legal complaint from one person who was a subject of
the report.

“Following
completion of the Devine report in March 2012, certain legal issues
arose. These issues arose at the time it had been intended to
provide the report to gardaí,” the HSE letter to PAC
states.

“One
individual who was a subject of the report, indicated particular
concerns they had with regard to the contents of the report. This
individual indicated that they would take whatever legal action
necessary to challenge the circulation of the report.

“Separately,
another legal issue existed in the context of a number of
individuals who had not taken up the invitation to contribute to
the investigation and respond to circulation of extracts of the
reports by Conal Devine.”

At that stage,
in late June 2012, legal advice was provided to the senior staff
locally that a final opportunity for a contribution should be
offered.

Nine
submissions were received and while Mr Devine made observations on
four of these submissions, no change was made to the final
report.

The provision
of the report to AGS in March 2012 had to be considered within the
context of these legal issues and an appropriate process put in
place for the report to be handed over.

At a meeting
on March 13, 2012, the senior manager dealing with the matter
locally discussed it with gardaí and it was agreed that the gardaí
would formally write to theHSE manager
requesting a copy of the final report.